The 2004 Nat. Comm. on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S. (the 9/11 Comm.) cited breakdowns in information sharing and the failure to fuse pertinent intelligence (i.e., “connecting the dots”) as key factors in the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) contain information about criminal activity that may also reveal terrorist pre-operational planning. Many believe that the sharing of SARs among all levels of government and the fusing of these reports with other intelligence information will help uncover terrorist plots within the U.S. The Nationwide SAR Initiative (NSI) is an effort to have most fed., state, local, and tribal law enforcement organizations participate in a standardized, integrated approach to gathering, documenting, processing, and analyzing terrorism-related SARs. This report describes the NSI, the rationale for the sharing of terrorism-related SARs, and how the NSI seeks to achieve this objective. It examines the privacy and civil liberties concerns raised by the initiative and identifies other oversight issues for Congress. Contents: (I) Background; (II) Why Information Sharing?: Information-Sharing Systems; (III) Suspicious Activity Reporting; (IV) Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI); (V) Privacy and Civil Liberties Implications; (VI) NSI Pilot Project; (VII) Current Admin. Actions; (VIII) Issues for Congress: Too Many “Dots”; Training; Data Privacy and Access; Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure; Metrics. Figures.